Here's another look at the Spartan browser for Windows 10

Some decidedly more crisp images of the rumored successor to Internet Explorer have surfaced, showcasing a dark theme and a glimpse at the Windows 10 interface. Spartan's layout lines up with what we've seen before: bare-bones, with easy access to share and reading mode buttons to the right of the address bar, and Cortana integration.

The dark theme of the browser ties in really nicely with the taskbar along the bottom. What do you guys think of the new look in Spartan? Anything in particular you'd like to see from a next-generation Microsoft web browser?

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Here's another look at the Spartan browser for Windows 10

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What excited me more than a UI change is Microsoft seems to be taking a big step towards faster internet surfing speeds. I don't care which browser I'm using as long as when I click on a news story it loads quickly. Chrome is just flat out faster. That's why I use it on the desktop.

I do like the look of the task bar, the black and white theme mimicks that of the soft buttons on the Windows Phone task bar, which ties the systems that much closer with each other. I kinda wish they would tweak the new icons a little to not look like Android so much, cuz I can't stand that OS. That and replace the search icons on both Windows 10 and Windows Phone/Mobile 10 with a Cortana symbol instead of the magnifying glass.

As far as the articles question as to what I would want in a new IE, how about a customizable toolbar. Right now all the toolbars like Bing, AVG, Google are really difficult If not impossible to arrange around the Favorites bar. Also extremely important is continued support of Adblock Plus for IE. Also, the AddOn store needs house cleaned. Too many weird add-ons.
Also to an earlier users comment there are sites that work best in IE. And there are "if chrome" and "if Firefox" page renderings out in the wild too.
IE also syncs the favorites bar nicely with OneDrive.

I have to say IE is a great browser for both touch and non touch devices. It's clean, intuitive and relatively fast, actually the only complaint about IE is that sometimes it gets slow, besides that, still being my favorite browser. I think Spartan is more a nickname than anything else.

only missing thing with current ie is extensions.other than that it's a fabaolus browser. if next browser from microsoft is going to have extensions like chrome or firefox then it will be my default browser.

It's not really a successor to IE more of a different take on how web can be surfed? (it's got to be due to internet explorer's bad reputation and how the youth of today have set the standard of browsing to be done by chrome, which in my opinion is a sub-par browser)

I want it to render web sites better than the current crop of IE on mobile devices. Or, at least, start providing OS level support for rendering engines other than trident so that users can at least get better(diverse) alternatives.

That is a problem with mobile websites usind non-standard webkit code or messing up browser detection. IE is actually the better mobile browser when the pages are properly coded. It's too bad so many web programmers don't seem to care about standards, not really. If they did they would have beautiful cross-platform and cross-browser sites. alas...

1. The sites you are visiting were coded for an older version of IE and take advantage of advanced IE features that were available before there were standards for those functions. If this is the case the sites would NOT function in other browsers and would only really work in IE. How does IE providing a way to work with sites that won't work anywhere else make it suck? If anything it is the fault of the programmers maintaining the sites for not bringing them up to date with current standards.

2. If the sites you are visiting do work full featured in other browsers it is a problem of browser detection. The programmers of the site may be sending older IE code to newer IE browsers. Again, not a fault of IE but a fault of the people responsible for the website.

If the work sites require compatability mode than it is those sites that suck, not necessarily IE. The only reasonthey even needed that is because businesses can't seem to be bothered to update their own stuff. Businesses tend to be Microsoft's best customers, and also the people that hold them back the most.

Does it require "compatibility mode" (whatever that is) for half the sites I use for work? If yes, then, it STILL sucks.

If a site requires compatibility mode that means it uses some things exclusive to an older version of IE. That means other browsers won't be able to open the page EVEN WITH A COMPATIBILITY MODE. So once again you're complaints are idiotic and just looking for an issue, by your logic the other browsers suck even more.

Well... Looks okay for me but nothing special designwise... I liked the thicker lines from Windows 8 more...
Icons get to thin to be perfect readable. Icons get to look more like Android... Be careful Microsoft!

Maybe because you've always had a powerful PC since IE 8.
I don't have many complaints with IE11, but its past versions were really slow, which is why many people switched to chrome or Firefox because they were faster, but chrome has become shit now. Add to that the hype about certain security flaws in IE (which have been fixed AFAIK) people got so mad at it, we have internet memes mocking it even today.

I'll not defend it's potential security issues, but javascript is basically running the web now and making it actually functional. You usually only hear of html +css being mentioned otgether, but javascript has become just as important.

In web development even if you don't know javascript itself, you'll need to learn one of the many libraries for it.

sadly I know, doesnt make it any less redundent in this world, it's jsut like flash player is today, it was needed in the past, but now its just an "easier" option, every other option can do what java does better, the absolute only thing java has going for it is being interpretive, which makes it easily cross platform, other then that, blech

You do realise that Java and javascript are two different programming languages, right?

Java is a full on programing language that requires a plug-in to show in your browser (like flash) and is capable of producing full applications like Minecraft and Open Office.

Javascript is the web's "native" and lightweight scripting language that enables things like Ajax and is present in nearly every browser as standard. It's completely complimentary to html + css and enables all the cool functionality you see online like webapps such as OneDrive and Office Online in your browser natively.

While uses of javascript are becoming redundant (such as for animation) it is essential for new functionality on the web such as the <canvas> element which enables native drawing to the web in html5.

I can't stand using IE, hopefully this will be better! It looks really good, & I'm glad to see the 3 dots rather than the hamburger (ack)! IE is so sluggish on my Surface 2. It is a pain to use & I wish something better was available. What I hate the most is that it doesn't keep previous pages in the loaded. The tabs routinely freeze up when returning to previous pages. Microsoft needs to figure out what the UC Browser devs have done to keep previous pages loaded so there's no lag & the page simply appears rather than saying loading... loading... loading... then freezing. Also some websites won't work without making several modifications. For instance, in order to use an online homework tool for my math class, I had to make like 6 setting changes for the site to even load! Works fine in Firefox & Chrome on my laptop w/o any modifications! IE is a pain & a nuisance. Period!

The website is designed by Pearson Higher Education. There's a page they have that gives instructions on how to get it to work with IE. I don't remember all the changes, but they had to do with privacy, security, & cookies. In my experience, most websites for colleges are designed to work best with Firefox, and they tell you that. I use Firefox on my laptop & I have very few problems. What I'd like to see is Avant Browser to design a Windows app. Avant looks like crap, but it offers the ability to change the browser engine.

This seems to be the desktop version, from July - im sure there has been some changes since then. Considering I use Windows 7 at work, and everywhere else i have 8.1 (with plans to update to 10).....im more excited to see the modern UI version of Spartan.

For all we know - Spartan could just be codename for IE12 - a rebranding of sorts.

I don't want them over or under. I want them on the same row. Vertical space is valuable. Don't waste it by putting on two rows that which can easily fit on one row. The address bar hardly needs any horizontal space. It doesn't need to take up the bulk of any row.

It does look a bit strange... A bit to square and to flat. Looks a bit like a bad edition of Material Design and not really something you would find on a PC. But that could very well change alot before Win10 comes around

that logo confirms absolutely nothing, its very common practice to use place holders during development, they most likely havent made an icon for spartan yet, so they are just using IE's for the time being.

OMG. looks like a complete ripoff of Chrome UI including the back, refresh button and Favorites * next to address bar. Hope they are using the webkit or fully compatible with webkit as well so that most non-Microsoft sites will work seamless.

Another thing I hope for is, to revamp the right click context menu. Hope they updated the hideous font in that context menu in IE and do away with the first option as "Open". That's a bone headed menu option. Why would I want to right click on link to "Open"? I can simply click on it. Chrome gives the smart context menu based on the object you right click on and on a URL it will show the first option as "Open in New Tab" which makes most sense. BTW, this "Open" menu option on right click is there for 15+ years, I still can't figure out why would anyone want to right click to open a link?

Developers need to stop specifically targeting WebKit, It's the exact same crap they complained about a decade ago, but I guess because Google/Apple did it it's ok to break web standards in that case...

it's because of engines like webkit that websites don't always work correctly in ie, because those websites don't use the html standard but instead use features that are only supported by engines that refuse to follow the standards

For starters, the tabs are Firefox (left side gap is useless), the rest is Chrome. I, for one, use Internet Explorer because, out of all the browsers, it uses the least amount of space for the interface. Heck, even the modern version does away with the UI, by hiding it. They should take elements from that. We'll just have to wait and see though, at least for a clear image. This could be the high contrast theme skin, as the icon lines appear to be thin as the ones on the taskbar.

Yes, I believe it was stated in an earlier article that IE12 and Spartan would both be on Windows 10 desktops, but Windows 10 on mobile devices (phones, tablets) would just have Spartan.

"The Verge says that Spartan will be released via the Windows Store, but it won't be a universal app, claiming that Microsoft will release a version for Windows 10 desktop users and a separate version for tablets and smartphones. However, both will have the exact features. The story also agrees with an earlier rumor from ZDNet that a version of Internet Explorer will still ship with Windows 10 for the desktop to help with backwards compatiblity for older websites."

The browser looks really nice, and looks like the taskbar UI has changed too since, can't decide if I like it compared to the new icons they were making for Windows 10 earlier builds. The new taskbar UI looks kinda androidish though.

IE11 is perfect, there areas that are very annoying in both touch and desktop version however I think they are trying to bring it all under one roof to avoid further confusion long term, personally love how everything is synced across all 8.1 devices however it's currently little hit and miss at times.

Yeah, this is very common during software development. You use a "placeholder" icon just so you can identify what it is - a browser - and only develop the branding when you know what it feels like. Also there is a chance that Spartan is just a codename and this would be the next version of IE. I hope not. I like changes. IE has a bad reputation.

IE doesn't have a bad reputation. Well, perhaps in the US but Microsoft seems to have a blanket bad reputation in the US, not specifically IE. I would think if this was a reputational thing they would be moving away from the name Microsoft. I do think the US is a bit of an exception in all this MS dislike (prolly due to all those Apple devices that most US people seem to prefer). I don't think it is as big an issue as it can appear on English language forums.

Well I can only tell what it is like in Germany, but IE indeed has a horribly bad reputation. Microsoft on the other hand is no word to a bunch of people or is not connotated in any way. Windows 8 on the other hand is again something noone seems to like. Everyone knows its name, few know what it is like but many dislike it. Stupid People, lol.

IE has the worst reputation! Maybe not for "casual" users, but among any web development or any web design professional it's the browser they hate the most. It doesn't comply to standards, it renders things in broken ways, it doesn't have the lastest technologies and so on. And if you've been an internet user long enough you've certainly seen some "This site works better [only works] in Chrome/Firefox/Safari". Especially complex web applications that make use of canvas and newer technologies.

The Microsoft name might not be well seen, ok, but I guess that if you compare it to IE, IE is certainly the most damaged brand. In fact, it is the reason why Firefox, Safari and Opera spawned in the first place. When IE came around it took over Netscape's user base but it made web development terrible, inconsistent. So projects like Mozilla and Opera wanted to provide an alternative to it, since Microsoft was certainly not interested in making IE compatible to standards, and so it became this frankenstein of abandoned and out of date technologies and security holes.

So I hope Spartan is not only a new name for a bad thing, but a completely new project made from scratch that respects the web and its framework, and becomes once again a valuable tool for users and developers.

Do you know anything about the technologies IE supports? Canvas is old and supported in IE for ages. None of these rendering and standards issues have been a problem since IE10, and most were not an issue since IE9. In fact as a professional myself I done Firefox and Chrome get the standards wrong much more than IE10+.

Right, IE 9 and IE 10, that's from the last 3 or 4 years maybe? How about the other 5 or 6 broken versions? Microsoft spent years implementing things their own way, much to our headaches. They did not follow standard naming and rarely did ever implement features fully, most things needed some hack to work on it.

THIS OWN PAGE has "If IE 7" and "If IE 8" special stylesheets so that it renders correctly on those versions of the browser.

My point is: even if IE 9 and 10 fixed a lot of things, and I'm sure they did, the community has lost trust in it since IE 5 or whatever. Most developers stopped supporting the browser and making use of its capabilities long ago. As @stevethenerd said in another comment, no one even targets the browser anymore, no site is developed to be fast or pretty on IE. It always comes last in priorities.

So once again, I do hope Spartan takes on the legacy of IE 10 and makes the experience even better and brings some fresh breath to this old beaten browser's image.